SUCCESS STORIES

CSI-Piemonte

CSI-Piemonte (www.csipiemonte.it) is a consortium that has developed IT systems for 30 years for public bodies in Piedmont, Italian Region of the North West. With an annual turnover of 180 million euro, over 1200 employees and 8 sites spread throughout the region, today CSI-Piemonte represents high IT standards in the public sector for Italy and Europe.

The consortium encourages dialogue between administrations, it facilitates interaction with business and research, and it works to extend the benefits of ICT to all Piedmont. Today 54 companies and bodies are members of the consortium. These include the Piedmont Region, the universities of the region, all the Piedmontese provinces, 15 municipalities, 19 local health & hospital boards, a large number of agencies, an Association of Municipalities and a Mountain Community.

Moreover, within the ICT programs for the Region, CSI-Piemonte recently launched the project to enable the mountain community of Val Vigezzo, an area in the Lepontine Alps, just a few kilometres from the Swiss border, to access the Internet and telematic services provided by public administration in Piedmont. These services are wireless through an extensive radio coverage of the territory and the interconnection of geographic cells with latest-generation Hiperlan Wireless Technology.

Italtel Solution

Italtel has been seletcted by CSI-Piemonte to design, develop and implement, in the Val Vigezzo area, the latest-generation wireless technology to build a broadband network for the municipalities and mountain communities in Verbania province, on the shores of Lake Maggiore. The Italtel infrastructure was designed and implemented to simplify access to and use of services by local public administration and, in the future, also by private citizens.
 
Two network accesses, one to the Regional Network for Public Administration (RUPAR) and one to the internet, implemented respectively via a HDSL connection in Santa Maria Maggiore and a satellite connection in Toceno, are the access points to the outside world from the geographical network built using Hiperlan Wireless Technology, with point-to-point and point-to-multipoint connections that can support data flows of up to 54 Mb/s in some areas, with encryption techniques in line with the most advanced security standards.

In addition, the possibility of accessing broadband connections enriches the availability of telecommunications services, which in turn become strategic tools for developing the area, thus bridging the digital divide that is generally present in mountain areas that are difficult to access and which, technologically speaking, are generally badly equipped.